It'll Be Different Now
by Soyokaze
Summary: After a mission goes wrong, those left behind deal with the aftermath.


It'll be Different Now

By Soyokaze

_Field Mission: Serial # 504_

_CN: Jupiter_

_0730 0601AC198_

_Lead.: 01_

_Agent(s): 02-05_

_HQ: 06_

_Detail: Former White Fang Leader Andorion Quinze, somehow surviving the explosion of Libra, has come forward again after all this time, rallying the former White Fang and all of his followers together. This self-proclaimed Neo-Fang has taken over a number of Preventer headquarters, including the largest weapons lock-up warehouse of the United Earth Sphere Alliance, which contains half of all seized weapons not destroyed after the Eve Wars. One of these is a nuclear warhead only retained for scientific fusion/ fission experiments._

The sun shines brilliantly in the early morning sky, the new, clear blue reflecting the golden light like water. As the blue of the sky meets the healthy green of the forest, the whole world takes on the ethereal sense of total peace.

A woman in a black and green jacket with the Preventer insignia inscribed on the right shoulder watches this scene from the other side of a window with a brass lock.

She sighs as she looks down at the cherry wood desk in front of her. All briefings, reports, and books full of numbers that could only make her feel more unfulfilled. She continues sorting them into three piles: Must-Do-Now, Can-Do-Later, and Trash.

The Must-Do-Now pile is getting painfully large.

As she brushes some deep violet strands of hair from her eyes, the door of her room creaks open. She knows who it is.

"You've been gone all night." Her voice is deeper than it usually is.

"I know." His is the voice of one who has fought many battles, and won most.

"Any word?" She knows by his tone what the answer is before he even says it. But she tells herself, he is often reserved and quiet. Why kill hope when hope can still live on?

"No."

"How long?"

"Five days."

"That's three days longer."

He is silent. Of course, she can hear him thinking, I know that. Do you think that there's anything I can do other than what I've already done?

She sighs again, this time it comes out as a sob.

"Are you all right?"

She stands up, and leans her hands on her desk for support, gazing mindlessly down at her neat little piles: Trash, Can-Do-Later, and the ever-growing Must-Do-Now. It made sense. Who was she to say there was going to be a later?

All of it is pointless.

Suddenly her hand is sweeping across the desk, and all the papers are flying, slicing through the air and fluttering to the floor like dying butterflies, and her pencil cup is hitting the wall, leaving an ugly dent, and all her writing utensils, that pen that she got for her birthday with her name inscribed on it, two bank pens she hadn't bothered to return, an inch long yellow No. 2 pencil that had lasted merely a month, they were all clattering to the floor. One of the bank pens broke open where she had been chewing on it, and ink stained the hardwood floor like spattering blood. All at once, everything stops.

Time stops.

And all her memories replay in an instant. All the facts of life hit her at once, slam into her like a blast from a sawed-off shotgun.

When everything begins again, she is looking down at her bleeding hand, and sees that one corner of the desk has a bloody stripe to the middle of the dark wood surface. She blinks once, and then fully takes in the numb, fresh gash taken out of the heel of her hand.

It didn't matter.

"It's been two years. _Two fucking years!!_" she screams.

She turns, eyes fixed on the floor, a mere frown excels to a vicious sneer. Their eyes meet as she raises her head, and she can see his sorrow.

"Everything will be fine."

She begins walking towards him and stops inches short, still locked with his eyes.

"Nothing will ever be fine, Zechs."

He embraces her, and she welcomes it, wrapping her arms around him as well. They need the warmth, need to be assured that they still had one comrade that they could each trust.

"I know, Lucrezia. Just trying to cheer you up."

They stay that way for a long time.

_Several Preventer scouts have infiltrated the base, and through this information has been received that Quinze plans to take control of however many national capitals he can catch off guard. He has cut off all Earth/ Space communication, and it is rumored that he already has control of the completely unarmed colonies. We are saddened to report that many of our scouts were killed in the extracting of this information. Apparently Quinze has more weapons other than the ones from the warehouses, though no mobile suits have been reported as of yet, and it is difficult to determine where he gained access to these weapons._

It is snowing. The colony's atmosphere control systems had backfired again. It is getting extremely cold, yet the season it is supposed to be is spring.

It is probably because that stupid Quinze had rebuilt the futile White Fang in hopes of-- what? What exactly was he trying to prove? That he could take over the world? Was everyone's damn purpose in life world domination?

Well, thank God it is over. Just some stupid former soldiers on power trips because they didn't get to kill anyone in the wars before. But none of that matters to Cathrine right now. All that matters to her right now, is sitting alone in her trailer, with only her tears as companions.

She glances at the clock. She has precisely thirteen minutes before she has to get ready for show time. The manager is going to be angry when he finds her missing.

Somehow, she doesn't care.

_All world capitals have been warned and are on their guard, but our main concern right now is the colonies. If they have been taken, then Quinze can force more men into his own service, thus enlarging his army. If we can crush his hold on the colonies, we will crush him._

The same sun shining down on Lucrezia Noin's home is also sending its warmth down to a graveyard, the same graveyard where many of those killed in the Eve Wars were buried. A young woman in her late teens, possessing of the longest, blondest hair possible, is sitting on her knees next to a large gravestone. It is shaped like a long half circle, and has a small arch on top. It is plain, undecorated, unlike many of the other gravestones, having statues of angels or elaborate cages of stone above them.

The young woman is talking to this gravestone, while holding a single white rose she plucked from a neighbor's garden. The few people that walk by her crouched form stare at her.

"...st think, if more people listened to you, then stuff like this wouldn't happen. Listen to me, can you believe this is me talking?"

She laughs and covers her mouth politely as she does so. She continues, placing her hands in her lap, her pale skin looking strange against the sharp yellow of her sun-dress. A straw hat lays, discarded, next to her.

"...said she wanted to quit the circus, but, of course, I knew that wasn't what she really wanted..."

All at once, she pauses. Her eyes turn soft and sad, and a sigh escapes her lips.

"You know, you may not believe this, but I'm going to miss you."

She slips on her hat just before one solitary tear slides down her cheek. She drops the rose onto the ground just in front of the grave, and hurries away, before anyone sees her sadness.

_Objective: Assassinate Quinze and dissolve the Neo-Fang._

Hilde Schbeiker is going about her normal routine. Every morning, she gets up, checks the books on the salvage yard, starts breakfast, sends out all the packages that were ready the previous night, takes a shower, and brushes her teeth. Having done all the former, she steps out of the shower, a terry cloth towel wrapped around her chest. She brushes her soaking hair back away from her face and looks in the mirror, noticing her red, bloodshot eyes and the thin line of her face. She knows it won't do for customers, but cannot bring herself to change her mood, or her expression.

She decides her hair would do a lot better if she combed it, so she roots around one-handed in the bathroom cabinet, searching for her comb. She feels the handle of something, and slowly pulls it out of the cabinet, her eyes widening as she does so.

It is a hair brush, a wooden one with a short handle and a round head, and many thin plastic bristles, broken in some places by thicker ones. It has obviously been used.

Hilde looks up into the mirror again, gazing right back into bright blue eyes that had suddenly dulled. She trembles, the disbelief on her face changing to anger as her eyebrows furrowed and her frown deepened.

She hurls the brush into the mirror, in order to, if nothing else, break the horrible silence that has collapsed around her.

The mirror shatters in a fan-tailed rain of glass and glitter, spraying millions of tiny shards onto her wet skin. Every one has its own unique sting. They scatter randomly across the floor, shining like tiny stars.

Her ears ring as she gazes into the mirror, at herself tenfold, and her broken, sorrowful face clinging to reality in the center of the scarred glass.

A scream echoes throughout the connecting warehouse as she falls to her knees.

_Mission Status:_

_Radio Transmission Received 0257/0611AC198:_

_Shuttle01: Approaching Target. No notable signs of detection._

_Shuttle03: Affirmative._

_Shuttle04: Rendezvous point confirmed. Meet at 0400 hours._

_Shuttle02/03: Affirmative._

_01: Gate thirteen is opening. Six O' clock._

_04: Full front screens. 02, take your shuttle down 6 degrees._

_02: Right- Where's 05?_

_static _

_04: -coming--umber t--you copy--_

_01: Scanning...has he already gone in?_

_04: Don--e him anywhere-_

_static _

_02: 04, Check your comm...no...my radar says he's at gate three..._

_01: I don't read him..._

_04: Sorry. Interference. But 05 is still behind us._

_02: What?_

_04: He's bringing up the rear...isn't he?_

_03: Mobile suits deploying. Bay thirteen._

_02: Mobile suits?_

_04: They must be jamming the radar...turn on full manual view..._

_02: Then where is 05?_

_03: There. He's trying to enter gate thirteen!_

_04: What? Doesn't he see the suits? static 05! 05! Wufei, get the hell out of there!_

_05: static _

_02: Wufei? What's wrong?_

_05: --int--an't---trac-- static _

_02: Shit!_

_04:...Heero, we'll distract the suits. Get to the colony._

_01: Acknowledged._

_04: We'll try to follow you._

_02: How many?_

_03: It looks like at least thirty suits._

_02: What do we do, Quatre?_

_04: Try and draw the first unit away from the rest. If we can split the remainder into two groups, we can try using the onboard guns._

_02: Right. static _

_04: Duo? Duo?!_

_03: I don't see him anymore._

_04: What the hell is going on? All right, we've still got to try and split them up, or we've got no chance. Trowa, circle around to the left side._

_static _

_04: Trowa?_

_static _

A girl plows into her at full speed as she is walking, and barely even turns with a small nod of apology. Recognizing the brilliant blonde hair, she grabs the young woman's arm.

"Dorothy?" she ventures softly. The woman lifts her head and reveals sad blue eyes.

"Miss Relena!" She exclaims, and jerks her arm away, startled. "I-I'm sorry. I...well...it's...what are you..." She bends her neck again to hide her face.

Relena takes her hand slowly. "Come with me?"

Her face is still hidden. "I-I can't."

"Please?"

Dorothy cautiously lifts her head once again, but hesitates before bringing her eyes back into view. "Why?"

"Because..." Relena pauses. "Because I need someone there."

Dorothy watches her curiously as she smiles a sad smile.

"I..." A lump in her throat makes her pause. "I don't have anyone there anymore."

"Miss Relena..." Dorothy watches as the Vice Foreign Minister breaks down in tears.

"I thought he would be all right...that's what he told me..."

Dorothy holds her as she rambles on through choked sobs.

"..and I got that transmission... that was hard enough...but I still didn't know..." She smiles bitterly. "Not knowing. That was the hardest part. Not knowing that something terrible had or would happen..."

Dorothy nods. "I know, Miss Relena. I hated it too."

"...then the explosion...it wasn't fair Dorothy! Two years of peace, and they had to die?"

"I know, Miss Relena, I know everything. I've had my fair share of tears."

She leans out of Dorothy's embrace, and wipes her tears from her eyes.

"Thanks, Dorothy." She grins weakly. "I really needed that." Dorothy returns the weak smile. They begin walking down the path, towards a rounded gravestone with an arch on top. A gravestone with five different inscriptions, each dedicated to one of five very different, very loved people.

Relena stopped a few feet before they reached the gravestone, and saw the five slightly weathered pictures fastened above each grave; the first one a mysterious young man, only one green eye revealed from under a shock of auburn hair; then a smiling blonde with eyes like the sky, still looking boyish despite his age; a youth whose unmistakeable thick chestnut braid was paired with a mischievous grin; a young Chinese man with elegant onyx eyes and matching ponytail; and lastly, a boy of almost twenty, his mop of mossy brown hair falling darkly over his face, shadowing Prussian blue eyes that shined despite their hardness. Her eyes pass over every one and the faces are so painfully familiar, the memories resonate in her mind like thunder. She loved- loves- them so much.

"It'll be different now." she says, stepping forward.

_Mission: Accomplished._

_Agent Status: Killed in action._


End file.
